Monday, December 09, 2013

Noting that "black students scoring far below white students on various mental
tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological
spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is
so," Thomas Sowell introduces some
new data that demands different explanations.

The November 9th-15th issue of the distinguished British magazine
The Economist reports that, among children who are eligible for free
meals in England's schools, black children of immigrants from Africa meet the
standards of school tests nearly 60 percent of the time -- as do immigrant
children from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Black children of immigrants from the
Caribbean meet the standards less than 50 percent of the time.

At the bottom, among those children who are all from families with low enough
incomes to receive free meals at school, are white English children, who meet
the standards 30 percent of the time. [format edits]

Considered only in racial terms, the low-income result is the opposite of what recent studies in the United States usually find. Sowell has a good hypothesis regarding the differences seen on each side of the Pond:

What low-income whites in England and ghetto blacks in the United
States have in common is a generations-long indoctrination in victimhood. The
political left in both countries has, for more than half a century, maintained
a steady and loud drumbeat of claims that the deck is stacked against those at
the bottom.

This reminds me somewhat of the
underlying thesis in Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals,
except that he is considering the role that philosophical ideas -- although he
stops short of calling them that -- play in shaping a culture. That consideration
is the hallmark of Ayn
Rand's cultural commentary, and I think that more such analysis can only
accelerate the abandonment of the wrong (and not even wrong) beliefs that are guiding so many of us today onto a path of
certain ruin.

"These data might seem to be some kind of fluke, but they confirm the observations in a book titled "Life at the Bottom" by British physician Theodore Dalrymple. He said that, among the patients he treated in a hospital near a low-income housing project, he could not recall any white 16-year-old who could multiply nine by seven. Some could not even do three times seven. "

I leave it for other readers to judge for themselves the merit of your comment.

"We should be careful not to accept research too quickly just because it confirms reality is what we think it should be."

That is an excellent point.

I'll also take this opportunity to note that even if it were conclusively proved that some racial group had a lower IQ in general than others, it would have no bearing on the question of whether its individuals posses rights.

'I'll also take this opportunity to note that even if it were conclusively proved that some racial group had a lower IQ in general than others, it would have no bearing on the question of whether its individuals posses rights.

Indeed. Neither would it be a moral justification for discrimination for or against an individual.

This might also be a good place to point out that even if it were conclusively proved that some racial group had a lower IQ than another; that would merely be a mean or median score of a population and would have no bearing on the IQ of any individual in either group.

"The book was controversial, especially where the authors wrote about racial differences in intelligence and discussed the implications of those differences. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic. They wrote in chapter 13: "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences." The introduction to the chapter more cautiously states, "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved.""

3. I am unfamiliar with the two authors you cite, but I would not regard the absence of Objectivist commentary about them as evidence that they have unanswerable arguments.

People who think that there is a significant correlation between race and (average) intelligence--at least those who present this view in public forums--tend to think that this is a really, really important issue. Some think that this is a fate-of-civilization type of issue. So it shouldn't be surprising that they write a lot of stuff arguing for their position.

Leftists are ideologically committed to the mirror image of this position. Since groups are everything to them, even the possibility of an aggregate statistical difference between races is a threat to their worldview. They see any empirical claim of group genetic inequality, supported or not, as ipso facto an argument for white supremacy. And so they'll attack the motives of their opponents, make fallacious appeals to consequences, etc. Leftists make the other group look level-headed by comparison.

Objectivism is orthogonal to both of these positions. Properly, Objectivists should not be committed to any position on the empirical race/IQ question, because philosophy alone cannot answer empirical questions. And because Objectivism upholds individualism, Objectivists shouldn't (and generally don't) think that the race/IQ question is a significant moral or political issue.

For this reason, it is pointless to say that Objectivists haven't rebutted the empirical claims of the race/IQ crowd. Most Objectivists probably think that this just isn't worth spilling a lot of ink over.

Causation doesn't mean correlation but wouldn't you expect to find a group of high IQ blacks somewhere in the world?

O bjectivists have no obligation to refute thinkers like Rushton. But they seem to get irate at the thought that intelligence and temperament have a strong genetic component. Anyway there are some written debates between Rushton and Nisbett on the web. Read them and decide for yourself.

"I've never seen an intelligent Objectivist critique of The Bell Curve and similar works by Jensen and Rushton."

Yeah, and not only that: I haven't seen any "intelligent Objectivist critiques" of astrology either, so it must be true!!!

First, there's the question of what would count as an intelligent critique in SJ's view--to be blunt, he's given no indication that what he considers "intelligent" is what an intelligent person would so consider.

Second, there's the question of what would count as a distinctively Objectivist critique, or even why anyone should demand one. Among other things, the debate is largely over the interpretation of statistics, and it's hard to see why Objectivism would have anything particular to say on that issue.

Third, there's the question of just how hard SJ has looked for such critiques anyway.

Yo, Gus, you write, "I am unfamiliar with the two authors you cite, but I would not regard the absence of Objectivist commentary about them as evidence that they have unanswerable arguments."

Indeed. I have read some of their work; it's interesting but not that convincing, but then I'm fairly well trained in statistics so I know enough not to fetishize them. In particular, despite the claims of their more lumpen, innumerate, and not particularly intelligent propagandizers (if SJ wants to take that as an attack on him, all I can say is that if the shoe fits...), the results of the studies are much more modest than they bruit about and certainly do not manage to disentangle social from genetic factors (correlations among sets of supposed proxies are not statements of causation--and the whole issue of interpreting and supporting the claims regarding the proxies is much richer and uncertain than people like SJ make it out to be or even recognize).

Note, for example, SJ's claim that problems in South Africa are due to race rather than social factors like collectivism. But then when all that matters to you is the color of the skin rather than the content of the ideas, you can see why such a person would in essence taunt Objectivists with their failure to share his utter inability to appreciate the power of ideas, and why the Objectivist response would strike him as simply beside the point. It really is ironic--to argue that whites are genetically superior to blacks in such a way as to how that your claim does not apply to you yorself!

SJ writes, "Unfortunately low IQ correspnds to higher crime and other social problems."

And higher IQ correlates with leftist ideas.

"I'm not in favor denying anyone's rights but just look at South Africa after the blacks took over."

Yeah, so? What do you propose for South Africa? Improved police forces, uniform conviction of crimes, and a color-blind legal system? Or are you in fact lying through your teeth and actually in favor of denying blacks rights in favor of whites?

I'll point out too that you have consistently evaded the following points:

"[E]ven if it were conclusively proved that some racial group had a lower IQ in general than others, it would have no bearing on the question of whether its individuals posses rights."

"Neither would it be a moral justification for discrimination for or against an individual."

"[E]ven if it were conclusively proved that some racial group had a lower IQ than another; that would merely be a mean or median score of a population and would have no bearing on the IQ of any individual in either group."

Rights are not based upon intelligence but upon the capacity to recognize and respect the rights of others. It is not low IQ but the failure to respect the rights of others demonstrated by committing a crime that is the reason for legally preventing a criminal from exercising his rights; many low-IQ people do not commit crimes. (Nor does high IQ prevent some people from committing crimes.) The legal system ideally addresses exactly the issue in question, criminality, not IQ or race, and introducting IQ or race into the equation is not going to make it more fair. So, what then is your point? If you're worried about black criminals being let off more easily than whites, then demand equal justice regardless of race.

Thanks for your comments. AD does a good job comparing the positions of leftists, racial determinists, and Objectivists. I also agree with his reasoning about why there isn't any (or much) Objectivist commentary on the writers SJ brings up. (I'm tempted to go so far as to say that whatever Ayn Rand wrote about determinism and racism is just about all that needs saying on the issue, but some more detailed refutations could conceivably be helpful.)

Snedcat puts that last point in a more pointed fashion.

Addressing SJ, I have no plans to read either author, as my time is severely limited by two young children at home and, more importantly, as you have given me no convincing reason to seek them out. As I said before (via an earlier blog post), for IQ to have a bearing on anything, the differences (if they exist) would have to be so great as to raise the question of whether the group in question is actually human (i.e., rational). You haven't made me aware of such a conclusion, given me a reason to think these authors have anything useful to say (Snedcat, despite his criticism, actually has done a better job of that), or in any way made it clear that you are not a determinist.

I do not mean to pick on you, SJ. I have encountered professed Objectivists who have attempted to "persuade" me of things by means of repeated assertions and some pretty egregious offenses against good reasoning and courtesy. They only harmed their own credibility in my eyes.

There is a lesson here for anyone: If you want to change someone's mind, you have to help them want to change it and you have to give sound reasons for doing so.

AD wites, "People who think that there is a significant correlation between race and (average) intelligence--at least those who present this view in public forums--tend to think that this is a really, really important issue. Some think that this is a fate-of-civilization type of issue."

Exactly. Ask yourself this: Assume you have a not particularly bright relative or friend (or just cast your memory backwards)--what should the state do? What thorny political and legal problems does that cause the state or the general run of citizens? Does he or she simply run amuck from being a standard deviation or two below the mean? Most likely not. So what policy (from a rights-respecting perspective) does that fact entail? Not much if anything that I can see...except for the distortions introduced by welfare statism. So what is the big deal?

So if blacks as a group have a lower IQ than whites, for whatever reason (and grant the charge that this says a great deal about intelligence), what is the problem? What I have seen argued is that this makes them peculiarly susceptible to rights-violating policies. My first response? Yeah, like those super-educated eggheads in Berkeley and Harvard are real stalwart defenders of the free market and individual rights! The sickness is everywhere, at every level society and in members of every race, and it's much worse (because philosophically argued and worked out) among the most well-educated...or at least well-credentialed. Fight that! And to fight that effectively, learn your ideas to the core. Otherwise, what? toss race war into the fetid, septic mainstream? Irrelevant, vile, and properly doomed to failure.

But that of course assumes that ideas have consequences and that ideas have power. If you've abandoned the mind, what remains is the view of the valuable ideas of western civilization as purely a consequence of the factors giving us white skin. And from that, racial separation, racial warfare, and a pure worship of tradition based on skin color, and to hell with whether the ideas are true or false, they're just effective. (Which is a pure form of American Pragmatism--what is right is whatever works. But how do you know it works? By what standard? Blank out.)

The fellow I'm thinking of here is a sad former commentor who despite being racially mixed himself (half-white, half Asian) goes on repeatedly about the importance of preserving white racial purity, including the installation of a fascist dictatorship a la Pinochet to slaughter all those leftists who make him so bloody-mindedly angry that he can't stand their existence--for, you see, while whites (or at least white males, for he despises women as being in point of fact almost as emotionalist and irrationalist as he is himself) supposedly are superior because of their capacity for reason, he himself is a disgustingly slavering emotionalist who can never think straight or apply reason when faced with opposition: Instead, he just brags droolingly and drags his knuckles bragging that if his interlocuotor were in the room with him, he'd "violate his rights." Which just shows that once you abandon the mind, you can only convince others with faith or force.